Improving Safety of Autonomous Vehicles: A Verifiable Method for Graceful Degradation of Decision and Control Responsibilities

Journal article, 2025

Developing safe and reliable autonomous vehicles is crucial for addressing contemporary mobilitychallenges. While the goal of autonomous vehicle development is full autonomy, up to SAE Level 4and beyond, human intervention remains necessary in critical or unfamiliar driving scenarios. Thisarticle introduces a method for gracefully degrading system functionality and seamlessly transfer-ring decision-making and control between the autonomous system and a remote safety operatorwhen needed. This transfer is enabled by an onboard dependability cage, which continuouslymonitors the vehicle’s performance during its operation. The cage communicates with a remotecommand control center, allowing for remote supervision and intervention by a safety driver.We assess this methodology in both lab and test field settings in a case study of last-mile parceldelivery logistics and discuss the insights and results obtained from these evaluations.